Click the movie poster or title above to download our review of the film, featuring Sean “Hollywood” Hunting.

Review in a Nutshell: A great concept hampered by some weak characterizations, Prince of Darkness is a film that almost suceeds at replicating Lovecraftian cosmic horror. It serves as the second entry of John Carpenter’s “Apocalypse Trilogy”.

11 Responses

I haven’t seen this in…jeez. Probably since it first came out on VHS. I think I need to revisit it. I remember feeling like it had a bunch of insane, cool concepts that it almost got its hands around, but ultimately bobbled them. Maybe that’s for the best, as the concepts themselves are pretty esoteric and bizarre.

Good movie. Not great, but it hardly deserves the obscurity it currently dwells in and it’s a great choice for a Halloween podcast.

I didn’t remember the hand of satan thing, but agree that the scene could have been done better. My question has always been, why doesn’t the Donald Pleasance character recognize the girl, given that he’s presumably been having the dream for a while?

I always thought that the full dream had not played itself out yet. As the movie goes on the dream gets longer. I don’t think that Carpenter was withholding the reveal of the dream to surprise us. I think that the full message had not come back yet. The broadcast was getting stronger and longer the closer to the event happening. Once Lisa Blount got knocked into the other side that was it.
The future that the message was sent from was secured. It was going to happen. She was the key to it happening. In the past before she got knocked into hell and the chance to prevent it was still a possibility, so was that time line. But at the end of the film it was too late. That time line was for real. So was the message.

As for the weak characterization, I’ve never had a problem with it. Like most Lovecraft stories the heroes serve only to move the story forward. The story is never about them and what happens to them is all but insignificant compared to the larger event at hand. In this aspect I think Carpenter nailed it…..ugh. Wow. I just wrote that. Sorry.
This film isn’t about the people.
The people don’t matter.
It’s the event that’s important.
It’s that same idea that Lovecraft wrote about.

I also love in this film that the music begins at the beginning of the film, and never stops until it’s over. No breaks, nothin. It’s like the use of green in the Matrix. It’s not overwhelming but it’s unnerving.

Excellent choice. I have always loved this movie, although I find most of my friends raise their eyebrows at it when I show it to them. For me, it’s all about atmosphere. And to be honest, I’m not sure I ever got the “There is a God and He’s evil” part of it. Perhaps it wasn’t as obvious to me? It has been a while since I’ve seen it, though. It obviously wasn’t a point that stuck with me.

At any rate, the visuals and audio really set a great mood for this movie. I didn’t care about character development. It made it feel more like we were one of the nameless scientists brought in just to find out what was going on. We only just met these people. Perhaps the real flaw here, then, is that any attempt was made at character development in the first place.

In the end, it’s all about that crazy swirling mass of green evil in the chamber. Which, strangely enough, I always thought was 12 feet tall or something. There’s only one scene that really shows it in proper perspective to everyone else and I don’t really think it was that big at all. Almost as if it were sitting on a table to make it look taller. Pretty awesome effect, though.

Regardless, thanks for the Prince of Darkness, certainly one of my favorites.

The message from the future is the first time I can remember seeing video-quality used in a horror movie context to creep the audience out. Next would be RINGU, then BLAIR WITCH, PARANORMAL ACTIVITY, and so on. I like to think we can thank/blame Carpenter for this as well.